Great Start, Bad Finish

For a while today’s game looked like it was going to be a great day for Astros nation.

It seemed, beyond all reason, that Myers might actually out pitch last year’s Cy Young winner. Halladay even had to be pulled 1 inning before Myers due to a high pitch count.

Unfortunately it looks like the Astros might have needed to pull Myers around the same time. He promptly gave up a couple of walks and a couple of runs before managing to get out of the bottom of the 7th with 2 runs on the books. Luckily, thanks to Bourn’s triple earlier that inning, he had a little buffer room, so all wasn’t lost.

Lopez follow up Myers and did a good job in a set up roll by giving up 1 hit in the 8th to set the stage for Lyons in the 9th.

After years of watching great closers like Smith, Wagner, Dotel, and Lidge I was thinking we had a pretty good chance to close this out and get ourselves a nice opening day win.

I guess I was spoiled, because Lyon certainly brought me back to reality.

The good news is that Myers pitched a fantastic game that he deserved to win. It was yet another efficient quality start for the 2011 master of quality starts. Until the 7th inning it really looked like we might get a complete game out of him. My guess though is that the longer top of the 7th the Astros had might have been just enough for the cold weather to do its thing on Myers.

Unfortunately Myers will probably see quite a few more of these late inning losses after a QS, much as Oswalt did before asking to be traded. Let’s hope Myers will be able to tolerate it a little longer than Roy did.

Beyond the pitching, and a sweet triple to the gap from Bourn, I just have to mention the awesome throw Quintero made to take down Victorino stealing 2nd. Falling forward from his knees Q executed a perfectly placed clothes-line throw to Hall that would have made Bentio Santiago proud. If you haven’t seen the play, keep an eye on the highlight reels tonight. It was a beauty.